Arabs, in their foundational makeup, cultural identity and inherited traditions, are an “oral” rather than a “written” nation. They are captivated by poetry, enchanted by eloquence and stirred by expression.
They celebrate the spoken word, using it to paint vivid images of their lives, environment, values and ethics. Their poems, proverbs and tales, and even their genealogies and chronicles of historic days, were transmitted orally.
The chains of transmission and narrators’ attributions in major works on early Islamic campaigns, biographies and history, along with certifications in Quranic recitation and the narration of prophetic traditions, remain living testimony to the centrality of orality in Arab culture.
This has endured despite the expansion of Arab intellectual horizons and the development of methods of documentation and writing across the arts, sciences and literature.
National memory as a source of legitimacy
States rest not only on territory and authority but on a shared narrative that grants them meaning and continuity.
Saudi oral memory has contributed to shaping a national narrative, reinforcing the image of a state of law and justice after chaos, affirming the symbolism of unification and transmitting values of loyalty and solidarity across generations.
Yet a modern state cannot confine such narratives to their traditional social spheres. It can transform them into institutional symbolic capital, managed and deployed within a national project. Here begins the transition from preservation to vision.
In times of transformation, national identity faces renewed challenges, particularly amid rapid economic and social change. National visions do not only build economies; they redefine citizenship and belonging.
The challenge, therefore, is not merely to safeguard oral narratives but to activate them, moving from simply preserving stories to rereading, interpreting and integrating them into education, converting them into interactive digital content and linking local memories to a unifying national narrative.
In this way, memory becomes a driving force of identity rather than nostalgia for the past.
Clarifying terminology
Before proceeding, three terms related to “oral” history require clarification.
1. Oral heritage: Material transmitted verbally, through speech, narration or performance from one generation to the next, including stories, proverbs, poetry, tales, songs, chants and myths.
2. Oral narrative: A source of history conveyed through direct transmission from eyewitnesses and contemporaries to later generations.
3. Oral history: A modern term and a scholarly discipline within historiography. It refers to a scientific method undertaken by specialized institutions to document oral accounts of individuals who witnessed historical events, according to established standards and through recorded and filmed interviews subject to review and scrutiny.
Oral narrative and documentation
Oral narrative forms the foundation of historical writing. As the discipline of history evolved, it became complementary to documentary sources. It clarifies aspects of specific periods, explains certain events and dispels ambiguity. It also reflects social behavior, values and characteristics.
Such narratives include personal memories and community stories addressing daily life, livelihoods and social relations. They describe professions, crafts and practices across agriculture, trade, herding and education, among other fields.
While official histories and written records focus largely on political and military developments, oral narrative emerges as spoken history centered on customs, traditions and social, economic and cultural issues.
It delves into details of food, clothing, remedies, arts and games, evening conversations, travel accounts and stories of love and life, as well as suffering, illness and death. It conveys emotions and thoughts that may appear only partially in records, personal memoirs and private papers.
Interest in oral heritage generally, and oral narrative in particular, is not a recent phenomenon among Arabs.
They were pioneers in establishing the foundations for collecting and documenting oral material by compiling the Prophet’s traditions according to precise principles and criteria.
Dr. Abdullah Al-Askar noted that Muslim scholars codified scientific rules for the use of oral accounts, which later developed into independent disciplines such as the science of transmission chains, biographical evaluation, criticism and validation, and the methodology of hadith.
Regarding literary oral heritage, including poetry and reports, Dr. Omar Al-Saif said that when fears grew over the loss of oral poetic heritage, systematic efforts were launched to collect, classify and document it before analyzing and studying it.
Narrators established strict criteria for collecting pure Arabic language from tribes considered linguistically untainted, and defined chronological parameters for admissible evidence. The transfer of oral material into written form granted it a degree of recognition that contemporary oral heritage often lacks.
In the Saudi case, much oral heritage remains undocumented, making it a historical reservoir yet to be fully explored.
Saudi historians’ methodology
Saudi history extends from broader Arab and Islamic history in its multiple components and channels.
Oral narrative has been a source relied upon by Saudi historians since the emergence of the first Saudi state three centuries ago. They received such accounts through various means and employed differing methodologies.
Dr. Abdul Latif Al-Homayed, in a study examining the methods of 18 historians from the founding of the Saudi state to the era of King Abdulaziz, classified them into three schools.
The first group, including Ibn Bishr, Mohammed Al-Obaid, Abdulrahman bin Nasser, Al-Zirikli and Mohammed Al-Aqili, applied rigorous methodologies. They received accounts from eyewitnesses or their transmitters, verified credibility and identified narrators, locations and circumstances.
The second and largest group, including Ibn Ghannam, Al-Bassam, Ibn Issa, Al-Rihani, Muqbil Al-Dukhair, Khalid Al-Faraj, Hafez Wahba, Saud bin Hathloul, Ahmed Attar and Mohammed Al Abdulqader, referenced oral accounts as sources but did not systematically document their methodologies.
The third and smallest group, including Ibn Abbad, Al-Fakhiri and Ibn Duyan, did not cite oral sources or explain their documentation methods.
During the founding of the Saudi state, collective memory preserved accounts of disorder and injustice prior to unification and the subsequent transformation.
Similar narratives circulated about the period before King Abdulaziz consolidated rule. Oral accounts also describe aspects of daily life and the roles of prominent families and tribal figures.
Traditional gatherings served as platforms of history, where news was exchanged, poetry recited and stories told according to established norms and customs.
Women also played a central role, not only as custodians but as narrators of detailed social histories passed down by grandmothers across generations, a practice that continues today.
Poetry, aphorisms and proverbs function as repositories of history, encapsulating events in verses and sayings. These are among the vessels that preserved accounts absent from official records.
Reliability, bias and selective memory
Oral narrative does not reproduce events verbatim. It reshapes them through time, the narrator’s awareness and collective identity. It should not be treated as a ready-made fact but examined critically through three dimensions.
Reliability: Memory evolves over time and is influenced by repetition and context. The solution is not exclusion but comparison with other accounts and available documents.
Bias: Narrators speak from social or political positions and may embellish or justify their group’s role. Narratives reveal as much about perspective as about events.
Selectivity: Societies preserve what serves their narrative and may omit disruptive elements. Silence itself can be meaningful.
Al-Askar stressed the importance of examining motivations, transmission methods and narrative structure before incorporating oral accounts into historical documentation.
Efforts to document oral heritage
Since the founding of the Saudi state, individual and institutional efforts have documented oral narratives. Media outlets conducted interviews across various fields, while the General Presidency for Youth Welfare, during its oversight of culture and arts, documented aspects of oral heritage in the 1980s.
Among individual efforts, Dr. Saad Al-Sowayan documented hundreds of recorded hours between 1983 and 1990 on Bedouin life, including history, poetry, genealogy and tribal markings, producing a project to collect Nabati poetry from oral sources.
Writer and cultural figure Abdul Maqsoud Khoja, through his book “Al-Ithnainiya” (1982–2015), honored more than 500 scholars, thinkers and writers. The sessions documented their biographies and experiences, later published in more than 30 volumes, contributing thousands of pages of oral testimony to the national memory.
Oral history as a discipline
Oral history, as a modern academic field, focuses on contemporary history. Institutions active in this field include:
The Hajj Research Center at King Abdulaziz University, which in the 1970s recorded interviews with service providers to pilgrims, documenting the history of their professions.
During its supervision of the Janadriyah National Festival for Heritage and Culture, the Ministry of National Guard recorded interviews in the 1980s and 1990s with men who accompanied King Abdulaziz, documenting aspects of the founder’s life. These recordings were later transferred to the King Abdulaziz Foundation.
King Fahd National Library, which launched an oral documentation project in 1994 and recorded more than 350 interviews with intellectuals and community figures, though they remain unpublished.
Government ministries, including Education and Transport, which recorded testimonies ahead of the 1999 centennial celebrations, used them in commemorative publications.
The King Khalid Foundation, which documented testimonies from around 100 princes, ministers, and officials about King Khalid’s life and published them in a dedicated database.
The King Abdulaziz Foundation established the first specialized oral history center in 1995 under the direction of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Drawing on the University of California, Los Angeles's experience, it developed scientific standards and recorded approximately 8,000 interviews covering multiple aspects of Saudi history.
These efforts reinforced oral narrative as a primary and complementary source to written documentation.
Toward a national digital archive
If oral memory preserved the story of unification and conveyed its values, the challenge today lies not only in collecting narratives but in managing them within a unified national digital archive governed by consistent standards of registration and classification.
Such an archive would link narratives to detailed metadata, ensure digital accessibility while protecting privacy and rights, and employ digital analysis and artificial intelligence tools to extract patterns and meanings.
The launch of the “Men of King Abdulaziz” project, a collaboration between the King Abdulaziz Foundation and the Ministry of National Guard during the first Oral History Forum in December 2025, underscores momentum in this direction.
Institutional governance of the oral archive would transform memory from accumulated information into a knowledge system that serves national identity, supports research and builds a balanced narrative reflecting diversity.
In the digital age, memory becomes not merely preservation of the past but a strategic pillar of national knowledge management.
